Writing Storage RFPs in 2010 - This is Not Your Father's Storage Array

The data storage industry has changed dramatically over the past few years. With the rise of virtual machines, virtual desktops, and private clouds, organizations must take a holistic view of the storage environment and its relationship to the server and application environments. In addition, areas such as energy conservation, capacity optimization and storage resource management (SRM) tools should be given careful consideration during the vendor selection process.

A broad range of products from storage, networking, and systems vendors, each with many different options, confronts the potential buyer. Therefore, using the Request for Information (RFI) and Request for Proposal (RFP) processes to differentiate the vendors and their offerings is highly recommended.
Performance, scalability, and resiliency are given; but new challenges are arising around power consumption, space requirements, and overall cost containment. In addition, accommodations for SRM tools and the various standards at play including SMI-S must be designed into the RFI/RFP.

Given the changing roles of storage systems and the storage administrators who use them, this tutorial discusses the “must-have” criteria that should be included in any data storage RFI/RFP in the current era. Attendees of this session will receive a sample RFP designed specifically to leverage modern storage systems and SRM capabilities.

Note: The session presenters will be Larry Freeman, Senior Technologist at NetApp and author of “Evolution of the Storage Brain”, and John Webster, Senior Partner at The Evaluator Group and author of “Inescapable Data – Harnessing the Power of Convergence”.